ELLROY REVISITS KAY LAKE, ELIZABETH SHORTNEW NOVEL TAKES PLACE IN 1941; 17-YEAR-OLD SHORT IS LOVE-CHILD OF DUDLEY SMITHJames Ellroy's new novel, Perfidia, will be published next month. It is the first book of a planned second L.A. quartet, which will take place during World War II (Ellroy's original L.A. quartet covers the years 1946-1958). As Ellroy told The Channels' Emerson Malone a couple of years ago, the new quartet "takes characters from the original [one] and places [them] in Los Angeles during World War II as significantly younger people." And according to The Telegraph's Chris Harvey, two of Perfidia's main characters include Dudley Smith and Kay Lake. There is also a young Elizabeth Short. As Harvey reports:

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Short provides the most striking element of Perfidia. Ellroy has introduced the 17-year-old Boston native as the love-child of his fictional – and deadly – Irish cop Dudley Smith. He was gripped, he says, by the idea of showing Beth Short “breathlessly alive, sweet natured, presciently intelligent” … “just the idea that there is this wrenching love between this bad man and this young girl who will go on to have her life snuffed out”.

Ellroy is unconcerned that some might find this stretching credibility. “People are connected in ways that we can’t imagine. I’m sure you know people that I know. I might have petted your dog at one point. We’re out there, we’re one soul.”

'WEDDING PARTY' PRODUCTION PHOTOSFROM DE NIRO PAPERS AT HARRY RANSOM CENTER IN AUSTIN; EARLY 'HOME MOVIES' SCRIPT, TOOAbove is a snapshot taken by scholar Ethan de Seife during his visit to the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas, where they have collections donated by Robert De Niro, Paul Schrader, and David Mamet. I've been wanting to visit the Center myself after posting about the De Niro collection here some years ago. Hopefully I'll get out there soon to report in more detail about some of the Brian De Palma-related screenplays in the De Niro collection, with the actor's annotations included, as well as any other interesting items.

But for now, we have these bits and pieces via de Seife, who explains in the post linked to above that he is working on "a book-length re-evaluation of De Palma’s work." He further explains, "To my mind, De Palma is the most talented of the directors of the so-called 'Film School Generation.' He’s also the most misunderstood: critical writing on his work has been stuck in the same ruts (Hitchcock, violence, misogyny) since the 1970s. It’s getting boring. A filmmaker as gifted as he is deserves better."

The photos above show De Niro in some color production photos for The Wedding Party, the first feature film for both De Niro and De Palma. In his post, de Seife also includes a snapshot of the Wedding Party screenplay, featuring some of De Niro's notes.

Here is an excerpt of some of de Seife's other findings:

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The film Hi, Mom! is a vicious satire of Vietnam-era politics and liberal empty-headedness; it remains one of the most subversive of all American films. Much of its deserved reputation for challenging satire rests on the infamous “Be Black, Baby” sequence, in which the members of a black radical group stage a work of participatory theater designed to allow white people to “experience” blackness. Patrons are subjected to all manner of abuse… and then rave about the show. It’s a deeply ambiguous and still pretty shocking scene.

De Niro’s own notes for this scene are, in total: “At ‘Be Black, Baby’ play where I play a cop and beat up the white liberals painted black.” The paucity of this description itself speaks to the importance of improvisation to both De Niro’s and De Palma’s art; this, in turn, reveals a great deal about the nature of the film’s production.

The most intriguing of my finds in the De Niro papers pertains to a De Palma film in which De Niro does not even appear. De Palma made Home Movies in 1980 in an unprecedented collaboration with film students at Sarah Lawrence. In the collection was a treatment (a kind of synopsis) of the script dated from 1970; apparently De Niro had been considered for a part in it. The treatment differs in significant ways from the film as it was made a decade later, and those differences themselves may also prove revelatory of De Palma’s evolution as an artist.

'PHANTOM' IN THE NEW YORK TIMES"THE FILM'S NEW POPULARITY HAS LED TO TALK OF COMIC BOOKS, REMAKES & STAGE ADAPTATIONS"An article by Marc Spitz in the New York Times looks at the "new popularity" of Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise. The article, which includes quotes from De Palma, several members of the cast, as well as Swan Archives' Ari Kahan and Phantompalooza's Doug Carlson, will be included in this Sunday's print edition of the newspaper. De Palma has mentioned several times in the past that the idea for Phantom formed after he'd heard a muzak version of a Beatles song in an elevator, but I don't recall him ever specifying which song before. It turns out it was the Beatles' most epic song. For this article, De Palma tells Spitz, "I heard a Beatles song, ‘A Day in the Life,’ coming out like Muzak. I saw the way that this stuff was getting corrupted."

GERARD WAY & 'THE BLACK PARADE'For its "Most Anticipated Albums Of 2004" issue, Alternative Press reported that My Chemical Romance had been working on an album that the band described as "loosely based on Brian De Palma’s Phantom Of The Paradise." The magazine states that that album would become Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, but the opening track on the band's epic followup, The Black Parade, has definite echoes of Paul Williams' Phantom songs. My Chemical Romance's frontman Gerard Way (the band officially disbanded last year) tells Spitz that, by his estimation, he has seen Phantom 30 times. "When I was doing ‘The Black Parade,’” Way tells Spitz, “I thought about the film all the time, about its message of sacrificing integrity in order to reach more people.”

PRESSMAN: "WE'VE BEEN APPROACHED BY A NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN BOTH EUROPE & IN THE STATES"Spitz' article concludes with the following three paragraphs:

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The film’s new popularity has led to talk of comic books, remakes and stage adaptations. “We’ve been approached by a number of people both in Europe and in the States,” Mr. Pressman said. “There was a false start years ago doing it in Las Vegas.”

Mr. Williams, who said he is working with [Guillermo] del Toro on adapting the director’s film “Pan’s Labyrinth" into a musical, said he could be on board for a stage version: “I still think it’s a great idea. I’d like to see it done.”

Mr. Williams, who in the fall will release a self-help book he helped write, seems to have the phenomenon in perspective. “Do not write something off as a failure too quickly,” he said. “The fact that it disappeared made it the great success it is today.”

'BLOW OUT' SOUNDTRACK NOW AVAILABLEINTRADA RELEASE OF LONG OUT-OF-PRINT SET FROM DONAGGIO'S OWN 2-TRACK STEREO MIXESIntrada this week released a new edition of Pino Donaggio's soundtrack for Brian De Palma's Blow Out. The soundtrack has long been out of print, following an initial release on Prometheus Records in 2002.

In a "Tech Talk" piece on the Intrada web site, the producer of this edition, Douglass Fake, explains, "After Pino Donaggio recorded his 55-minute score for Blow Out on 2″ 24-track tape at A & R Recording Studios in New York City, he mixed and edited approximately 48 minutes of it down to ¼″ 15 ips two-track stereo for inclusion on a possible soundtrack album. The album never materialized and those two rolls of stereo tape are all that has survived of the score. They are the source of this current CD, made available courtesy of MGM and housed in perfect condition in their vaults. Fortunately, what the composer chose to prepare for his potential record represented the majority of what he had recorded, covering every one of the key sequences of the picture and score.

"Donaggio’s music is a meld of his infectious synthesizer-led rhythmic voice from lower-budget horror scores of the era and a richly melodic, dynamically vivid orchestral score worthy of the best A-list pictures. In fact, as the movie opens with the editing of a low-budget horror movie-within-a movie titled Coed Frenzy, the composer gets to provide his own score-within-a-score, infusing the pseudo-sleaze music with a rhythmic and harmonic language essential to the architecture of the actual Blow Out score itself. This balance between popular vernacular and symphonic colors throughout provides the score with a distinct and very rewarding flavor.

"There were several changes made during postproduction in the use of music and the scenes for which the cues were composed, resulting in many sequences playing in a different order from what was originally intended. For this CD, the sequencing of the music follows the film in its final form. The closing 'End Credits' music has also been included at the beginning of the CD simply to 'bookend' the score.

"For those interested, the following cues comprise the roughly seven minutes of music not included on the surviving master tapes: 'Shower Scene' (M4), played over the closing portion of 'Coed Frenzy Disco,' 'Sally’s Theme' (M7), 'Replay Of Sounds' (M9), 'Burke Changes Tire' (M10), 'Manny’s TV' (M19), 'Watch Wire' (M31), 'Karp’s Hotel' (M44) and a very brief cue simply titled 'Photos Of Sally,' heard right after Jack arrives at Karp’s residence.

"The presence of EQ and reverb on the tapes indicated the composer had already prepared a sound that met with his satisfaction. Although we mastered the 1981 audio using 2014 technology, we have avoided any artificial 'pumping up' of the original, composer-approved sonics. We also kept noise reduction and other sonic alterations to the music down to a minimum. What you hear is pretty much what the composer intended.

"The music speaks for itself."

The CD, which will be "available while quantities and interest remain," can be ordered from Intrada for $19.99 plus shipping. A handful of the tracks can be sampled at the site.

Rolling Stone"Foo Fighters Turn Ice Bucket Challenge Into Epic 'Carrie' Tribute""Grohl and Co. do an excellent job sending up Carrie's climactic prom disaster, incorporating actual shots from the movie, while Grohl, in full Prom Queen regalia, offers over-the-top tears (first of joy, and then unquenchable rage after he's doused). While the clip cuts before Grohl can unleash his hellish retaliation, Taylor Hawkins, playing Carrie's date Tommy, dutifully takes one for the team and gets conked on the head with the empty bucket. Fellow Foos Pat Smear and Nate Mendel play the rapscallions who trigger the bucket drop on Grohl's head."

TIME"The Foo Fighters Spoof Carrie for Their Ice Bucket Challenge Video""Okay, okay, we know you’re probably sick of watching celebrities like Britney Spears (and, worse, randos in your Facebook timeline) do the ice bucket challenge, but it won’t hurt to watch just one more, right? The Foo Fighters put a lot of effort into their contribution to the viral phenomenon by recreating the iconic prom scene from the 1976 horror film Carrie.

"Grohl nominates a few others to complete the challenge: Stephen King (who wrote the book upon which the film is based), John Travolta (who was in the movie) and Jack Black (for unknown reasons.) But it’s going to be pretty hard for anyone to top this."

TWO ESSAYS ON 'PHANTOM' IN WINNIPEGROD WARKENTIN: "WHY NOT WINNIPEG?"The Dissolve concludes its Movie Of The Week series on Phantom Of The Paradise with an essay Thursday by Alan Jones, which looks at the impact of the film in Winnipeg. "In summer 1975," Jones writes in the essay, "[Paul] Williams solidified the film’s popularity in the town by holding two sold-out shows, again mostly attended by so-called 'teenyboppers.' While he sang a number of the hit songs he wrote for The Carpenters and Three Dog Night, the crowd was there to see his numbers from Phantom Of The Paradise. According to Andy Mellen’s review of the show in the Winnipeg Free Press, much of the singing was 'drowned out by the constant screaming of "We love you, Paul" from the majority of his adolescent following.' He even had a phony ceremony during the concert in which he was presented a gold record for the Phantom soundtrack. (A skeptical Winnipeg Tribune writer checked with the record company and discovered the award had already been presented in Toronto.) In Winnipeg, the isolation of this phenomenon meant that the locals had no idea Williams wasn’t equally beloved elsewhere in the world, or that Phantom had only played modestly in every other city. 'None of us really knew that it bombed everywhere else,' says Carlson. In Winnipeg, where the film regularly played in local repertory cinemas over the next few decades, Phantom Of The Paradise was a classic like any other.

"Located in the middle of the Canadian prairies, Winnipeg is an island of civilization unto itself. Far away from both coasts and the Great Lakes, the nearest major city is Minneapolis, 734 kilometers (sorry, 456 miles) to the south. If you ask Google Maps the fastest route from Winnipeg to Toronto, it’ll take you through North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan before getting you back into Canada. This isolation meant a lot more in 1975, before the Internet and cable television closed the cultural distances between cities. For [Guy] Maddin, the revelation that the rest of the world didn’t share Winnipeg’s enthusiasm for the film was a shock: '[I] thought it was one of the iconic great films for so many years, because as a Winnipegger, it was so huge in the local zeitgeist, the civic-geist. I couldn’t believe when I later found that among De Palma buffs, it’s ranked like the 40th-best of his films.'”

Is the question I ask of you? We are constantly asked, Why Winnipeg? my standard answer is, We got it, no one else did. Phantom of the Paradise is engrained in every Winnipeg adult 45 or older. When Wayne in Waynes World held up the Frampton Comes Alive album and spouted how every kid was issued it in his neighbourhood, its exactly that for us!

I grew up a film buff... and still see more films than I care to admit, but the one thing I have always said, is that if a film touches you in a way that makes you think about it a few days later, then something profound was done to create thought and discussion, even if its just with yourself. Well, here we are...not just a few days, but 40 years later and we are still talking about Phantom of the Paradise. Not bad for a film that tanked at the box office and disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Winnipeggers have always claimed this film as their own, I being one of them. But all that changed for me in late July of this year when I along with Creature Features hosted the 40th anniversary at the Arclight theatre in Los Angeles. Yes, I realize that Phantom was big in Paris, but for us, it was our film, plain and simple and growing up Phantom in Winnipeg was a passage that many of us took. Teenagers and children as young as ten or eleven years old watched the film, multiple times at the local theatre. Stories have been told, some made up, some wrongly translated that the youth of Winnipeg had nothing better to do because of the long cold winters and the attitude of Winnipeg that could relate to the downer ending of the film. Now, I will be the first to admit that there is truth that Winnipeg has a reputation for cold long winters, but also Winnipeggers have a reputation of talking against the city that they call home. We do, and that should stop, but we have engrained generations with the fact that cold winters equals unattractive living and many have taken this as truth. But really that is not the Winnipeg I remember and lived and still live to this day. So Why Winnipeg? why not? And rather than turn this into a lecture about Winnipegs rich history and how at one point Winnipeg was pivotal in its role in helping shape Canada, I will simply say that, We got it, no one else did. Winnipeg is rich in its appreciation of the arts and always has been. We are a musical city; Ive seen more local bands go the big show than a lot of other warmer destinations. Dont believe me, just Google it. Most of us at one point or another probably entertained the idea of being in a band, or somehow in the arts, I know I did. Theatres were abundant back in the 70s and 80s and seeing films was a joy that allowed us to escape the limited three channel television that we had at the time. It allowed us to see the world from a different perspective and allow our imagination to soar. Many of us went on the create our own art, write books, play music or write screenplays, some moved away and many came back after a time. It is Winnipeg, it is what we are. But Phantom was different, very different. We had always assumed that this film was a major success everywhere that it played! To find out years later that the exact opposite was true, came as a bit of a shock. The album went Gold in Canada, due to sales from Winnipeg. Hell, I remember saving up my money to buy the soundtrack only to be told that it was sold-out and I would have to wait two weeks for it to come in again? No wonder we thought the film was a global phenomenon, it was, for us, a time before the Internet shortened the distance between all of us. I always described it to people as our Star Wars, it was that big. So why did this film do so well in Winnipeg? No one will ever be able to come up with the exact combination of events that brought us to the theatres, but I do know that word of mouth advertising became one of the reasons that the film did so well. Local news had interviewed multiple viewers during their entertainment segment, newspapers had done the same, local record stores had difficulty maintaining stock of the soundtrack, even after they had done multiple advertisements in the local papers and weeklys, older siblings told their younger counterparts who in turn told their friends and so on.

Los Angeles taught me something, but also made me lose something, something I gladly give. Phantom is no longer a Winnipeg thing. 40 years later it has become what it always should have been, a film truly appreciated by all, even if youre not from here. A thousand people entered the Arclight in Los Angeles! A sold-out crowd that was met with as much appreciation and enthusiasm as anything we had done in Winnipeg. When the film began, I remember the cheers and I wondered if we had finally made it up to those that originally put on the show for us. I was never sure how the film would be received in LA, but seeing every seat filled and the rush from the crowd put my mind at ease. I spoke to the crowd during the evening, but I think I was talking mostly to the cast. I wanted to say See? Now everyone gets it! We arent the only ones. Not anymore. This film is appreciated and all the work you did. In a way it was my thank you to all of them for what they gave us so many years ago.

So Why Winnipeg? Why not Winnipeg...it just took the majority of you 40 years to catch up to us. But dont worry, next time, well let you know a bit sooner.

MORE 'PHANTOM' ESSAYSDISSOLVE MOVIE OF THE WEEK; POP MATTERS - "MY FIRST MIDNIGHT MOVIE"As we mentioned the pther day, Phantom Of The Paradise is the Movie Of The Week at The Dissolve this week, and things kicked off Tuesday with Noel Murray's terrific Keynote essay, "The double vision of Phantom Of The Paradise."

"Few filmmakers use split-screens as creatively as Brian De Palma," Murray states in the essay. After offering an example from Sisters, Murray continues, "But De Palma is just as skilled at partitioning the screen without drawing a straight line down the middle. Throughout his career, De Palma has used split-diopter shots, layered foreground/background action, mirrors, windows, and other clever bits of set design to set his characters off from each other and from their environments. In Phantom Of The Paradise, De Palma breaks out some of those gimmicks for multiple reasons: sometimes to squeeze more info into the frame, sometimes to draw connections between the characters, and sometimes just to cue viewers that they’d better keep their eyes open, and not to assume everything about the movie is immediately evident. In its roughest outline, Phantom Of The Paradise is the story of a naïve musician who has his life ruined by an impresario: a one-dimensional cautionary tale about commerce gobbling up and destroying art. But Winslow and Swan—played by William Finley and Paul Williams, respectively—aren’t as at odds as the basic scenario implies. The characters share more than just the same space on a movie screen."

POP MATTERS: "MY FIRST MIDNIGHT MOVIE"Meanwhile, at PopMatters, Bill Gibron posts about seeing Phantom Of The Paradise at a packed midnight screening when he was just 13. Here's an excerpt:

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Sure, there’s some blood, and a bit of over the top directorial flare, but for the most part, this fascinating musical is more complicated than it is conventional. It deviates wildly in tone, going for the broadest of comedy strokes (thanks to Gerrit Graham’[s] sexually ambiguous glam rocker, Beef) to the most diabolical of satanic substance. When Williams’ Swan is finally exposed, the make-up effects are unsettling. In fact, the whole film has a sadistic undercurrent that is easily recognizable now.

Back in 1974, however, Tom and I were dumbstruck. We were both terrified and oddly intrigued. This was like nothing we had ever seen before, and even then, a legitimate frame of reference probably wouldn’t have helped. I remember being taken in by Winslow’s opening number, a sweeping piano piece that, even today, gives me goosebumps.

I didn’t get the reference in the title, “Faust”, but I could see how it fit in the film. I didn’t remember any other music (except for Beef’s final performance where he picked up members of the crowd and threw them like ragdolls back into the throng before being electrocuted by the Phantom with neon lightning bolts). Today, the film plays like a lost gem. Back them, Tom and I were convinced we had lost our minds.

Maybe it was a bit of a contact high. Perhaps we were just too young to appreciate the whole midnight movie experience. By the time we walked out of the theater it was clear that both Tom and I were deep in our own little world. Dazed, we almost passed his mother, car idling, her hair in a mess of curlers and wearing a sheepish housecoat. It was close to 2AM. We never stayed up that before.

Even after we were at Tom’s house and settled in to his basement train set-up/bedroom area, we were electric. We talked and talked. We puzzled and questioned. We tried to make sense of what we saw. For at least two weeks afterwards, we spent countless hours in conversation with our mutual friends just trying to figure out what the heck happened, and when we could experience something similar again.

'PHANTOM' IS MOVIE OF THE WEEK @ THE DISSOLVEAND SOME LINKS SURROUNDING REACTION TO SCREAM FACTORY'S NEW BLU-RAYI'm still delving into the treasures of Scream Factory's new Blu-ray release of Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise, but I can say that the new interviews with De Palma and (separately) Paul Williams are full of insights into the ideas and production of the film, and the brief interview with make-up effects artist Tom Burman is also quite interesting (Burman never met De Palma while working on it, but became a fan after seeing the finished film, which he still thinks is one of De Palma's best). And being able to see the alternate takes and outtakes side-by-side with the completed film versions, in high-definition, is also very, very nice.

Thanks to all the attention brought on by this new release, The Dissolve is featuring Phantom Of The Paradise as its Movie Of The Week this week. What does that mean? Well, each week, The Dissolve features a Movie Of The Week, inviting staff and readers to watch the movie prior to a forum they publish on Wednesday in which the staff discusses the film, and encourages readers to continue the discussion in the comments section. The day before, Tuesday, will see a Keynote essay, and Thursday brings another essay focusing on one aspect of the film. So, here's what Noel Murray wrote on the site as to what we can expect:

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The Dissolve staff is populated by several rabid De Palma fans, who’ll be convening for our Movie Of The Week Forum next Wednesday to discuss what De Palma had to say about art and commerce circa 1974, and how he said it in the language of some of the great expressionist filmmakers of the 20th century. Prior to Wednesday’s Forum, I’ll be writing Tuesday’s Keynote essay about how De Palma uses split screens and layered action in Phantom Of The Paradise to suggest that there’s more going on in the film than just a broad spoof. And then on Thursday, Alan Jones will look into a how a movie that bombed at the box office in the United States became a Rocky Horror Picture Show-level cult hit in Winnipeg. If you’d like to join in on the conversation, Phantom Of The Paradise came out this week on a features-packed Scream! Factory Blu-ray, and is available for rent or purchase from multiple online video retailers. So just sign this 1,000-page contract in your own blood (skip the fine print, which is just there for your own protection), and take your place in line. The Paradise will open next Tuesday.

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SOME LINKS

Marc Mohan, The Oregonian"Movies don't get much more cult-friendly than Brian De Palma's 1974 freakfest, which was inspired by the director hearing a Muzak version of a Beatles song in an elevator. The idea of a beautiful song being transmuted into garbage by the music industry eventually evolved into the strangest retelling of the 'Faust' legend ever put to film...

"The hyper-saturated colors and varied soundtrack (which Williams supervised) make Phantom a worthwhile Blu-ray purchase. The jam-packed collector's edition from Shout Factory includes a new, 50-minute documentary on the film's making, a commentary track with several of the actors, and an interview with De Palma in which he admits to being a fan of the reality show Survivor.

"The highlight, though, is an amiable, wide-ranging chat, over an hour long, between Paul Williams and Pacific Rim director Guillermo Del Toro, who seem to be old pals. Unexpected? Sure, but no more so than anything on screen in Phantom of the Paradise."

Sean Lass, Playback: stl"I don’t even know how to begin talking about 1974’s Phantom of the Paradise. How can I describe this film to anyone who hasn’t seen it? The plot is fairly straightforward (a modern retelling of The Phantom of the Opera, with elements of Faust and other classic stories thrown in), but the overall experience of the film is so wonderfully weird and unique that you really just have to see it for yourself. And you should, because it’s an absolute blast."

"Rod Warkentin was born and raised in Winnipeg. He saw Phantom with his sister at the Garrick Theatre when he was 10. He estimates he saw it 29 more times in its initial Winnipeg run. 'It caught on with word-of-mouth,' he explains. 'Something about it appealed to the youth. Anyone who’s our age who grew up in Winnipeg, you ask them about it and they’ll say, "Oh yeah, it’s phenomenal."’...

"The story goes that Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk met as teens at a Paris screening, launching a creative partnership that culminated in a collaboration with Williams on their 2013 hit record. 'They saw Phantom of the Paradise together more than 20 times,' Williams boasts. 'It’s their favourite movie!'

"It’s odd drawing a line between French techno-pop icons and 50-year-old Winnipeggers. But Phantom has a universal quality. 'I’m reluctant to call myself a sex symbol, but Swan was sexy,' says Williams. 'I think it showed people that you could still get things if you were the runt of the litter.' For Warkentin, Phantom’s recuperation has more to do with the unforgiving pessimism that boils beneath the campy veneer. It’s the sort of thing that would naturally play with self-persecuting adolescents, from Paris to the ’Peg. 'Nobody gets what they want in the film,' he notes. 'No one wins.'”

Glenn Kay, CinemaStance"It’s an excellent movie that was ahead of its time and satirically skewers not only the music business as a whole, but the fans who clamor for more. By the time it’s over, showmanship begins to mesh with reality all for the sake of entertainment – the film’s villain even plots an on-camera assassination of an artist to boost record sales. It’s hard to watch and not think about how many things about the industry that it predicted forty years ago. The movie is well cast with both likable and memorable characters, who all desire fame and public success to some degree and ultimately pay a high price for it.

"It is also a striking, visual treat highlighting a wildly exaggerated color palette. As expected, director De Palma’s camera moves are also incredible, some memorably shot sequences. One standout is an event staged and filmed with two cameras in splitscreen while other notable moments feature unique angles or are filmed in rooms filled with giants mirrors – it’s amazing that the camera itself never appears to be visible in any of these scenes at any point."

Jeffrey Kauffman, Blu-ray.com"Paul Williams is certainly one of the more unlikely multimedia stars of his generation. Elfin in appearance and kind of generally odd looking anyway, Williams also has a kind of nasal singing voice that's unvarnished but hardly a technical marvel. And yet this diminutive sprite has managed to chalk up not just scores of film and television appearances, but innumerable hit records (albeit sung by other, perhaps more vocally gifted, artists). While Williams had already managed to carve out a few lesser acting roles by the time he made Phantom of the Paradise in 1974, he was already a show business phenomenon courtesy of his still impressive songwriting skills. Both on his own and with his frequent collaborator Roger Nichols, Williams had become the go-to hitmaker for such chart topping acts as The Carpenters ('Rainy Days and Mondays', 'We've Only Just Begun') and Three Dog Night ('Out in the Country', 'An Old Fashioned Love Song'). Still, as even Williams himself seems to realize in the interview included on this Blu-ray as a supplement, he seemed like an odd choice to both provide the song score and star in Brian De Palma's whimsical reimagining of a kind of mashup between The Phantom of the Opera and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Phantom of the Paradise's song score is a pastiche driven amalgamation that runs the gamut from singer-songwriter confessional material to proto-fifties' doo-wop outings, and neither of those idioms, nor anything else musical in the film, would seem to suggest Paul Williams as the perfect choice. But Williams had already begun to stretch musically, as evidenced by his facile lyrics for the criminally underappreciated pop-rock cantata Wings by the late French master Michel Colombier. (Colombier had a noted—no pun intended—if also underappreciated film scoring career, including the recently released Une Chambre en Ville.)...

"Phantom of the Paradise might seem like an unlikely effort from the likes of Brian De Palma, but the film actually traffics in many of the same ideas that have informed some of his more commercially successful films like Carrie. Once again there's a lonely outcast who's specially 'gifted', and once again carnage explodes when the outsider isn't given his or her due. While there's no religious subtext here a la Carrie (unless one subscribes to the opinion that rock is religion), there's a sinister melancholy that creeps through the film that seems to suggest that poor Leach has been abandoned not just by his fellow man, but by whatever Divine presence there may (or may not) be in the world. Finley delivers an amazing performance in this film, all the more remarkable in that virtually his entire face is hidden behind a helmet, and really only his mouth and one eye are visible. But the anguish and rage of this character are virtually palpable almost all of the time.

"The film is a visual phantasmagoria, one of De Palma's most hallucinogenically outrageous achievements in production and costume design. The finale of the film is like a rock concert being run by and attended by a pack of wild, peyote intoxicated, wolves. Through it all, Williams' music (and even his voice—he serves as the singing voice of Leach) wends its way through innumerable genres as The Juicy Fruits change both their band name and their look (repeatedly). Williams was something of a 'staff writer' at A&M Records, arriving at the label just as Carpenters were taking off to be the biggest act of the early seventies. While Williams disparages many of his tunes as mere 'easy listening' fodder, his oeuvre during this period is really rather impressively diverse. This proved to be Williams' second Oscar nomination (the first was for the prior year's 'Nice to be Around' from Cinderella Liberty, which Williams co-wrote with another Williams, John), and while he didn't take home the trophy that year (Nelson Riddle received what was probably a 'career Oscar' for The Great Gatsby), it's probably Williams' score that is one of Phantom of the Paradise's most enduring achievements. You might even say the song score is devilishly good."

Budd Wilkins, Slant"Phantom of the Paradise doubles down on the winking intertextuality that has always characterized De Palma's cheekiest work. The film's broad-strokes indebtedness to its thematic forebears (Faust, The Phantom of the Opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray) is noticeable enough to be spotted through the blinkered monocular gaze of the Phantom's helmet. And with its riotous Psycho 'shower scene' riff, De Palma crams a plunger over the puss of detractors who dismissed him as little more than a discount-Hitchcock rehash slinger. But the finer-grained citations are there for the delectation of eagle-eyed cinephiles: The bomb in the trunk of the Beach Bums' jalopy carries more than a Touch of Evil, and Swan's attempted assassination of Phoenix on live TV sets its sights on John Frankenheimer's scarily prescient The Manchurian Candidate.

"That's not to discount the finale's profound resonance with other De Palma films. The orgiastic revelry of the wedding distinctly recalls Dionysus; in fact, De Palma had members of that film's cast planted among the extras to whip up their frenzy. And there's more than a whiff of 'Be Black, Baby' from Hi, Mom! in the scene's avant-garde theatrical staging. Then again, the conflation of political assassination and public spectacle points to Blow Out, the one film that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Phantom of the Paradise for the disconsolation of its final moments. This is De Palma pouring the new wine of his formal inventiveness and anti-authoritarian irreverence into the old bottles of archetypal myths, and it remains a supremely entertaining anomaly within his filmography, yet entirely emblematic of his filmmaking sensibilities."

Patrick J. Doody, Retroist"Man, this is a weird movie. Not just like 'trippy' because it’s from the 70s, but it’s…really out there and I loved it. I think I responded to the material because the look and sound of the film is not only pure pop art, it’s authentic pop art. It never feels like DePalma tried to make a 'modern' or 'hallucinatory' film that the young people could understand. He made a film that used the look and style of the period and then made it his own. It’s not cheesy or trying to be cool, it just is cool and it totally holds up."